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Every day, we are exposed to upwards of 10,000 advertisements. While this may come as a shock to some, it simply goes to show how tough it is to capture a user's attention. An ever-increasing level of competition doesn't help matters, driving businesses to come up with innovative ways to communicate with customers. If you have a mobile app, you must understand what push notifications are and while some of you may be aware of what a push notification is and how it works, the question remains, are you taking advantage of it?
Push notifications are an excellent marketing tool for anyone who has a mobile app since they allow you to communicate with your consumers. Just be cautious when employing this method. If you use this strategy too frequently, people may choose to ignore your push alerts. This is clearly something you should avoid.
I'm here to help those of you who don't understand what push notifications are or how to use them. That is why I wrote this manual. That way, you'll be able to figure out how to apply them to your current mobile app. Let's get started.
What are Push Notifications?
A push notification is a brief message that prompts the user to take action. Push Notifications, first offered by Apple in 2009, have evolved into a significant user interaction strategy in past years. In today's busy, distracted world of short attention spans, Push Notifications aid to capture a user's attention. Users receive them when an update is available, when something is due, or when they need to resume to an app.
Push notifications can be sent by websites, web apps, smartphone apps, and even wearable apps. With consumers spending approximately 5 to 6 hours each day on their phones, mobile app notifications are a great way for developers, marketers, and app publishers to encourage users to take action.
Different forms of push notifications are used by current mobile advertisers to encourage consumers and promote engagement:
- To boost sales, eCommerce stores deploy tailored push notifications.
- To keep users up to date, social networking apps offer real-time information.
- Content is sent by media businesses to deliver time-sensitive information.
Types of Push Notifications
- Location-based notifications: When users visit a specific location, they receive location-based notifications. Consider Google Maps recommending nearby areas of interest according to your recent travels, or a dating app telling you to find your match in a new location.
- Transactional push notifications: Transactional push notifications inform users about recent acquisitions, membership renewals, order tracking, and other relevant information. Transactional notifications are used by banking apps, financial platforms, and eCommerce apps.
- Customized notifications: Notifications that are customized are used to provide relevant information to mobile devices. For instance, a customised special offer to persuade a user to make a purchase.
- Insightful push notifications: These messages provide real-time information and updates. Consider news applications that bring you real-time information on global events or a weather app that keeps you up to speed on the weather.
- Promotional push notifications: Apps use push notifications to distribute promotional and marketing offers to segmented user lists. Promotional notifications can boost website traffic and conversion rates while also being a more cost-effective marketing tool than PPC, social media, and other channels.
- Abandoned carts push notifications: These push messages prompt clients to finish their transactions. These are also used by eCommerce platforms to inform purchasers that a bargain is only available for a short time.
- Rich push notifications: use video, GIFs, emojis, or graphics to attract attention and increase interaction. For example, food photos linked to restaurant menus are used by online food delivery companies to make customers order directly
- Triggered push notifications: These push notifications have been triggered as a result of the user's actions. One example could be receiving a daily mobile reminder about an exercise after signing up for a health or fitness program.
- Time-sensitive push notifications: Users will feel a strong call to action when they get time-sensitive notifications. In the eCommerce industry, this is ideal for limited-time offers or promoting discounts.
- Reminders: Reminders assist users to remember crucial things like meeting somebody, finishing a daily chore, and so on.
How can push notifications help you?
Push notifications provide a fantastic chance for mobile entrepreneurs to communicate directly with their customers.If used effectively, Push Notifications can be a great tool for connecting and gratifying people. Some of the advantages of using them for mobile apps are as follows:
- Users can choose whether or not to receive Push Notifications. This provides the user power over them, making them less likely to uninstall your mobile app just because they dislike or find Push Notificationss bothering. This alternative is a win-win situation because only those who are eager for your Push Notificationss will receive them.
- Push Notifications can be sent based on the user's location, giving them a lot of flexibility. As a result, you'll be able to tailor your marketing plan to each market or location, improving your likelihood of succeeding.
- Push notifications are little more than a marketing tool because they can assist you to improve the user experience. Even though the two are strongly interrelated, there is a distinction to be made between delivering a message that simply promotes a new feature and one that provides value to the user. Things are all about how you say it at the end of the day.
- Push notifications improve user retention and engagement. As previously said, these notifications are a call-to-action and, just as they can aid in conversions, they can also be used to increase user engagement. A significant part of this is not going overboard, because users who receive too many Push Notifications are more likely to unsubscribe or abandon your app completely.
What characteristics make a Push Notification great?
It's not enough to understand the significance of push notifications. You must devote time to your marketing plan and understand what makes them succeed. They might implode if they don't.
- You need to know who your intended audience is , just as you do when designing a mobile app, so you can figure out what sort of message to deliver and when. This will assist you in crafting the most effective message for that audience and ensuring that it is received well.
- Make your messages distinctive. Personalized material has a higher chance of making an impression than generic stuff. Make use of whatever data you have about your consumers to create a push notification that is tailored to their preferences. This also applies to user segmentation; there are a variety of methods to divide consumers (by region, demographics, or device kind), all of which may help you design a more tailored strategy. A tailored message is more likely to be opened by the recipient, resulting in higher retention and engagement.
- Keep in mind the various gadgets. Knowing a user's mobile device is important for a variety of reasons. It's crucial to note in this example that while an Android user is more likely to click on a push notification than an iOS user, iOS users open the messages seven times quicker. It's also crucial to comprehend how this influences your plan.
- Use analytics to your advantage. Any marketing plan should be based on data analytics. You should explore the effects of your push notifications on your most important metrics and make necessary adjustments. When you miss the target, analytics will assist you to improve your plan. You may experiment with different sorts of messages and sending times until you find what works best.
- Find a perfect equilibrium. As previously said, one of the most important aspects of good push notifications is not going overboard. You should strike the correct balance between delivering too many or too few alerts and distracting or discouraging your users.
Push Notifications Do’s and Don’ts
How do Push Notifications appear to users?
Users typically receive notifications in the form of a banner or pop-up alert while using their phones. This message appears regardless of what the user is doing. Push notifications are usually displayed in a single window on most operating systems. iOS has the Notification Center where users access it by swiping down from the top of the screen, and it is sorted in chronological order. Unread messages are displayed on the lock screen of Android devices. Users can configure push alerts for particular apps. Users can turn on or off notifications, as well as select the alert style used by iOS and Android. Users can also change the red label on an app's homescreen icon that displays the number of unread notifications.
20 Push Notification statistics for 2021
In recent years, push notifications have become an important element of a marketer's toolkit. Here are 21 intriguing statistics and facts about push notifications that you should be aware of:
- Based on the device and sector, push notification subscription rates to range from 0.5 % to 15%. Currently, the financial sector has the greatest rate of opt-in.
- While you may execute push campaigns on both mobile and desktop platforms, the former gets a larger rate of subscribers 60% than the latter 30%. The remaining 10% are tablet users.
- Push notifications can enhance app retention by 3 to 10 times.
- In terms of click rate and subscription rate for mobile push notifications, Android smartphones exceed iOS devices, 91.1% for Android vs. 43.9% for iOS.
- A single push notice sent to new customers within the first week after installing the app may increase retention by 71% over the course of two months.
- The average click rate for web push notifications is 12%, but with push notification management, this may be increased to 15%. This percentage rises to 18% when push alerts include rich media.
- When you run highly focused push notification campaigns, you may receive a 30% click rate.
- Push notifications for cart abandonment have a click rate of 16%, while push notifications for re-engagement mobile marketing techniques have a CTR of 13%. Campaigns that have been recently viewed have a CTR of 13%.
- The largest click rate is found between 3 and 6 p.m. The best days to increase opening ratios are Wednesdays and weekends.
- The largest subscription rates of the year occur in July and December.
- Depending on the sector, the best day and hour to deliver push alerts differ. eCommerce often receives the best answers between 3 and 4 p.m. on Wednesdays, media and marketing between 9 and 10 a.m. on Tuesdays, BFSI between 3 and 5 p.m. on Tuesdays, and digital marketing firms between 2 and 7 p.m. on Tuesdays.
- Including actionable CTAs in push notification campaigns can increase their success rate by 40% or more.
- Among all businesses, the eCommerce industry sends the most push alerts, 22.03%. Media, blog articles, and publications all pay attention to it. Media, blog entries, and publications are all carefully following it, with 18.79%.
- Push notifications have a 3500% return on investment!.
- Users who had been active in the previous 24 hours had the greatest push notification delivery rate, which was above 80%.
- Email marketing appears to be losing ground to push notifications in terms of results. When comparing open rates, click rates, and retention rates, push notification campaigns saw a 50% boost in opening rates, a 7-fold rise in click rates, and a 93% increase in retention rates.
- Push notifications are incredibly beneficial to 70% of app users, and as a result, 53% of these users are prepared to give personal information like their location.
- The most popular push notification content is promotions 34%, followed by fresh developments 26% and geo-localized material 26%.
- App users that opt in to get push alerts to see their retention rates double, with an app engagement rate of 88%.
- Emojis 20%, industry-specific send timings 40%, rich formats 25%, personalisation 4x, and advanced targeting may all help increase push notification open rates 3x.
For a better engagement, use Push Notifications smartly
Is using push notifications a requirement? No. But is this something you should be doing? Absolutely. You can see how push notifications can benefit your app and your business based on everything we've discussed. When communicating with consumers, push notifications are far superior to SMS. Just ensure you don't deliver them too frequently, or users will stop getting them. To improve the user's experience and provide value, send them based on their location. Push Notifications with customised content, for example, can help you boost interaction, loyalty, and recruitment. When sending them out, remember to keep the user's device in mind.
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As always, get in touch if you’d like to discuss more. Until the next article, use them push notifications wisely, folks!
